Skip Barber Racing Files for Bankruptcy; Owes Lime Rock Park $1.2 Million
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The racing school owes more than $10 million to its creditors, according to court documents.

The Skip Barber Racing School has filed for bankruptcy, according to documents provided to The Drive, with somewhere between $10 million and $50 million in outstanding liabilities.

The school filed a petition for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York on Monday, according to the copy provided to The Drive.

The most prominent creditor by far is Lime Rock Park of Connecticut, the court filing reveals, with Skip Barber Racing School owing the track $1.225 million for track rent. Somewhat ironically, Lime Rock Park is owned by Skip Barber himself, who founded the school that bears his name. Barber has long since divested himself of Skip Barber Racing School, selling off controlling interest in it back in 1999.

The school also owes rent to several other race tracks across America, including $239,617.19 to Road Atlanta, $169,568 to California's Monterey County (the lawful owner of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca), $112,000 to Mid-Ohio, $105,983 to Palm Beach International Raceway, $56,623.77 to Virginia International Raceway, and $29,600 to Willow Springs, among other unsecured claims to creditors.

The filing declares that the school possesses assets valued at roughly $5.3 million. That includes a listed $1,489,500 worth of automobiles and $1.6 million in auto parts. It also places a value of $2 million on the Skip Barber Racing School brand name and training techniques.

The Skip Barber Racing School was created in 1975, after Barber retired from professional racing and set about teaching high-performance driving as a coachable skill. According to the website, the school helped to launch the racing careers of Josef Newgarden, Spencer Pigot, Marco Andretti, Conor Daly, and many other professional drivers; it also counts celebrities as Tom Cruise, Patrick Dempsey, and Jerry Seinfeld among its graduates.

Sy, I see the return to our site's original name. Great memories of its origins. Thank you.

Like many of you, I have so many great memories of what a wonderful place this company was for all of us to work and play together. So many great friendships among drivers and instructors, so many great races and memorials, milestones, getting into trouble, coaching experiences, computer car laps, our first time to Mont Tremblant and the annual luge crashfests, the many -ism's of Nick Nick, Keith Watts, Sid Brenner, Steve D'Brecht, the Dodge Viper Hot Laps we did at Daytona and Charlotte, listening to stories at dinner with very few to tell due to my young age, the awesome reunion arranged by Jim Pace and Michelle Henn, the banquet emcee skills of Terry Earwood, man, I could go on and on. Actually, so many of us have our experience there archived on this website.

Sy, thank you for opening this website for us to share and record our experiences.

Greg, thank you for keeping this online home open.

Let's keep the storytelling going, and hopefully we will still see each other at the track again soon!